I am the Peace Queen. You’re calling me that and other people are calling me Peace Queen because I made up that name. I told you the story about being titled the Greater Tacoma Peace Laureate. But I made up the name Peace Queen, and I decided to call myself Peace Queen.

There’s no other science than that. I gave myself that title because that’s what I was feeling. To say, what are you feeling? What are you feeling that you’re worthy and that you deserve? Because when you’re feeling worthy and strong and competent, you got more to give.

You have more to give and to share with others when you elevate yourself first. Yes, I said that out loud! When you are loving yourself first. You got to love yourself fiercely enough to make up your own name and title and demand, insist that people call you that because you made it up. What that symbolizes is that whatever life we’re living, we can just make a new one. Okay? Make a new one.

And the new one that I see, where peace is really about helping others to see each other, to bring awareness to good old-fashioned kindness. Let me look you in the eye and say, “hey” and “hi” and let me show you some element of love that I care for you as a human. If I can show that by nature of my title and the spaces that become available to me to occupy different communities than I can bring that joy into the room.

And hopefully it’s infectious. Hopefully, when I go to the classrooms and talk to the the little ones and the young adults about kindness and service, that if I can spark one or two, then that wheel of activation is on it, right? It’s operating towards what my goal is, unity and love. I’m focused on that. I’m focused on speaking it, and I’m focused on living it.

And when I went to the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, I went to Oslo, Norway, as my prize from the Greater Tacoma Peace Committee. I got to meet with the leading peace researchers in the country. What they told me is that peace is built from the ground up that peace is in our hands. That peace is active.

You live in peace. It’s a way of being. It’s a state of mind, and it’s a way of doing. You’ve got to be intentional about your position on peace and how you live it out. You got to be intentional.